Fowl Cay Abacos Bahamas

The western end of Man-O-War Cay

Our morning passage on the 21 April started at 0910 which gave us enough time to head up to and west along the southern side of Man-O-War Cay, stop at a SCUBA diving site and then move on to an overnight night anchorage.  As we got closer it was clear that the west end of Man-O-War Cay has some really rather exclusive looking holiday retreats.

Corn Bay at the western end of Man-O-War Cay

We passed Corn Bay on our right and then turned at West Point to make our way between Man-O-War Cay and Fish Hawk Cay.

The north side of Fish Hawk Cay ahead and Fish Hawk Reef out to our right

The mooring buoy for ‘The Wall’ dive site

To the northeast of Fish Hawk Cay are Fish Hawk and Fowl Cay Reefs and between the 2 reefs, at the eastern end of Fowl Cay, is a mooring buoy where we hoped to tie up our dinghy to do some diving.  We anchored BV in the shelter of Fowl Cay just a few hundred metres from the buoy and prepared our kit.  The conditions were benign which would make diving on the outside of the reef safe for us and it was reassuring to know that our dinghy would be securely tied to a mooring buoy throughout our dive.

‘The Wall’ dive sort of lived up to its name with a drop off on the outside of the cay of about 12 metres.  We spent about 45 minutes underwater, diving to a maximum depth of 14.5 metres.

As you can see from the photos it wasn’t a ‘proper’ wall drop off; more of an edge to the coral.  Out to our right, out to seaward, the bottom was flat and sandy again as far as we could see.

Nicky’s ‘friend’, a Nassau Grouper

As seems to be normal on our dives, Nicky picked up a ‘friend’ on the way.  To date she seems to have attracted barracuda but today she was sought out by a large Nassau grouper.

Nassau Grouper can grow up to about  4ft long so this wasn’t one of the largest specimens, but at about 3ft long it’s the largest fish that we have had swimming this close to us.  We are not sure quite why but he seemed to be really inquisitive, initially swimming a metre or so back from Nicky….

…. but then deciding that it was safe to get much closer.

And then much closer still!  He stayed with us for about 15 minutes and the experience of having such a large fish so close to us was quite special.  There was clearly no fear of divers in this grouper’s outlook on life.

A large shoal of Blue tang swimming along the edge of the reef

We continued swimming west along the edge of the reef, eventually leaving our friendly grouper behind us.  But we were then spoilt by a ‘swimpast’ from a large shoal of Blue tang…

Nurse shark

… and nestled in under one of the ledges Nicky spotted a Nurse shark resting on the seabed.

Top left: Sea fans and Sea rod soft corals.  Top right: A shoal of Blue chromis.  Bottom right: Grey angelfish along with several colourful Fairy basslet

There was reasonable amount of soft coral too plus some colour from a shoal of Blue chromis and some purple and yellow Fairy basslet zipping past a large Grey angelfish.

Top: Barracuda.  Bottom left and right: Male and female Stoplight parrotfish

No dive in this area would be complete without spotting a few Stoplight parrotfish with their distinctive and bright colouring and lurking about 10 metres away from us we also saw the distinctive shape of a barracuda.

So all in all there was quite a lot to see but the highlight of the dive was really our friendly Nassau grouper swimming right beside us for the first 15 minutes of the dive.

Retracing our route, we got another glimpse of most of the fish that we had seen on the way out and the clear edge of the reef made navigating back to our dinghy very easy.

Back aboard BV we upped anchor at 1320 and motored a few miles west along the inside edge of Fowl Cay to its western end.  Here we re-anchored and then took the dinghy north of the cay to a shallow snorkelling site. Nicky snorkelled for longer than I did but eventually we had both had our fill so, after a longish dinghy ride back to BV, it was time to wash all of our dive gear and make ready to move on.

Fowl Cay, Abacos, Bahamas